Sneaking Past the Sentries

My purpose in going to San Diego was not to test the security of the Republican National Convention.

I was there just to see what the inmates were up to after they came outside looking for someone to tell how wonderful it had been on the inside.

I didn’t have any official credentials so I had to bide my time hanging around in front of the Convention Center listening to the protesters across the railroad tracks.

Busting in to the main hall was not on my mind. The place was guarded by 2,000 members of the San Diego Police Department, plus the FBI, Secret Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and 10,000 “others”: probably the Boy Scouts of America, the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Southern California Volleyball Assn.

Just getting to the street in front of the building was hard. The metal detectors, a kind of gateway to Americana, were no big deal. What rankled was the grim demeanor of the people searching our carry-ins as though everyone in line was a terrorist; the only question remaining was which one had the plastique.

Although I didn’t think it would do much good, I had hung my Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department press credential on a faucet chain around my neck. It is a small and unimposing document that bears my name and photograph, not at all like the credentials issued to people with business at the convention. They are large and proud and cry out to be noticed.

When I reached the metal detector a guard said “What’s that?” and pointed to my press necklace. I was hot and tired and, with equal testiness, snapped back, “What’s it look like?” He made a grunting sound and waved me through.

*

It has to do with attitude. If you skulk around and hang your head and shrug, you’re never going to get into anything. You have to walk right up, as my mother used to say, like you’re the district attorney.

Also, it has to do with appearance. Gray-haired and paunchy, I have the sad and disarming look of an old bloodhound and am therefore regarded as less than threatening. I even get patted once in awhile.

But it soon became obvious that wandering around outside wasn’t going to do me a lot of good. Television reporters had already talked to every cute old Kansan in a funny hat that came anywhere near them and were now reduced to interviewing each other, cameras pointing nose to nose a few feet apart like dueling spies from Mad magazine.

I was beginning to look at the Convention Center the way a dog looks at a slaughterhouse: there were probably a lot of goodies inside, but you had to get there first.

I finally went up to the main door and flashed my tiny credential as though I were the crown prince of Moldavia and stepped into the lobby. The guard glanced at my picture and said, “It doesn’t look like you.” I said, “I was younger then,” and walked by him.

I fully expected to be dragged down and handcuffed, but no one did anything and there I was, Mr. Outside on the Inside.

*

I walked up and down the lobby a few times, exchanging pleasantries with people who believed that Mexicans ought to stay in Mexico and women in the kitchen, but that got pretty boring after awhile.

I could hear tantalizing speeches and applause from the other side of the doors that led directly onto the main floor, and I suddenly wanted to be there, too. No more old dog metaphors. I was a coyote gauging my chances.

There were several guarded entrances to the main auditorium where, at the moment, Susan Molinari was rattling the rafters with her keynote address. The speech was only so-so, but the rafters were low and easily rattled.

I picked a door guarded by a woman who seemed to chat with everyone, waited until her attention was diverted and trotted on past her into Dole Country.

Once there, mingling with the restless stream of humanity swirling around me, I was aware of many eyes checking the credential dangling from my faucet chain, but no one said anything.

I edged through the crowd onto the floor itself, but by then Molinari had finished and everyone was heading for the door. I was carried along like a stick on a flood tide. It was over.

I had breached tense Republican security without even trying and could have raised all kinds of hell on the convention floor right in the middle of prime time. Tom Brokaw may have loved it, but it gave me the willies.

My wife said later she was glad I wasn’t a mad bomber because then we’d have to be on the run all the time and live in one of those horrid campers parked on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.

Now that really makes my blood run cold.

Al Martinez can be reached through the Internet at [email protected]